


Blank Slate

by cakeisnotpie



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Dark, F/M, Not Fluff, Psychological Torture, Spoilers for Agents of SHIELD, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Violent, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1605377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakeisnotpie/pseuds/cakeisnotpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>HYDRA or SHIELD, what did it matter? Had he ever really had a choice? Be the good son, do as your told, don’t feel, don’t think, just pull the trigger. What else was there? He was whatever they wanted, play the game, put on the mask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blank Slate

**Author's Note:**

> For Katya. Probably not exactly what you wanted, love, but you know how my muse operates. 
> 
> This fic is in response to Ward’s assertion: “If Fury wanted eye candy, he could have picked Romanov” and Maria Hill’s reply, ”I’ll tell her you said so.” Fair warning: this is very dark and violent and involves discussion of death. As usual, angst worked its way in along with a couple other characters who needed to have their say.
> 
> This was written before the season finale of Agents of SHIELD, so I don't know what's going to happen. Might get everythign wrong.

_Inspired by these gifs:_

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_John Garrett was dead and Grant Ward was still alive. He didn’t know what to do, how to feel anymore. No reason to go on, no reason to live._

Her fist hit with all the strength of her anger behind it, knuckles plowing into his face. His teeth bit down on his inner cheek, blood flooding his mouth as his head snapped back. Another punch to his stomach, sharp, and he tasted bile on the back of his tongue.

“What do you want?” He slurred out between thick lips. “Me to lie and say I loved you?”

Dark eyes stared back at him, cold and shuttered that once held passion and understanding in the shadows of the night. Her foot slammed into his knee, and he crumbled to the floor as he felt the muscles pull taut and snap, white hot pain shooting up his thigh.

“I want nothing from you,” Melinda spat out. “Nothing at all.”

_HYDRA or SHIELD, what did it matter? Had he ever really had a choice? Be the good son, do as your told, don’t feel, don’t think, just pull the trigger. What else was there? He was whatever they wanted, play the game, put on the mask._

His leg was a useless weight as he dragged his body across the cold floor, bracing his back against the wall. His eye was caked shut, swollen and aching, but he couldn’t see anyway in the dim light of the bare bulb that swung from the high ceiling. Shivering, he dropped his head back and shut his eyes as she stood, hands on her hips, her presence not a threat but a promise.

“Sloppy seconds,” he moaned as much as spoke. “Shouldn’t have let Melinda go first.”

Yanking him up by his collar, she planted her foot on his knee and put her whole weight on it. Black dots danced across his vision as she leaned down, so close he could feel the heat of her breath stir the edges of skin from sluggishly bleeding open cuts.

“Victoria Hand,” Maria twisted the collar tight, “was a friend of mine.” The cotton began to constrict and Grant could feel it start to cut into his skin. “Did you even blink,” she asked as he tried to draw in a deep breath, “before you sent Fitz and Simons to their deaths?” Tighter and tighter, he couldn’t breathe.

“Not dead,” he managed to protest with the last of his air that trickled out. He’d hoped that they’d find a way out of their watery grave. They were too smart not to.

“No thanks to you,” she said and that was the last thing he heard before he blacked out.

_The dead on his left, the living on his right. Those who deserved it, and those who didn’t. The ghosts didn’t bother him; he’d long ago made his peace with them. He was just a tool to be used, an asset, nothing more. Empty him out and fill him back up with new orders, he did as he was told. Garrett said to kill them; he pushed the button and watched the container drop away. Fitz’s face starred back at him, trust turning to horror as he realized just what Grant Ward was … or wasn’t._

Raw throat burned with each inhalation. Head pounded in time to his heartbeat, gradually slowing as he quit struggling and accepted. Darkness hovered around the edges, waiting. Through his blurry vision, he saw her, broken and upended world written all over her face, cheeks stained with the track of real tears.

“Are you the good cop?” he asked. “Here to console me and play on my feelings?”

“You don’t have any.” Skye’s voice was harsh, grief for what they might have had flashing in her eyes. “I just want to know why? How could you do that to Leo? Jemma? A.C.? Me?”

The laugh he conjured up from his aching chest was gravelly and far too revealing. “Because I was told to. And I always do what I’m told. Grow up. Life isn’t hacking some website to make a statement, Skye. Someone has to do the dirty work so everyone else can live in their safe little worlds.”

“Bullshit,” she snapped. “You had choices; you didn’t have to push the eject button.”

“Still such a Pollyanna. Of course I did. They were in the way.”

He saw it coming; she always telegraphed her moves. He could have gotten out of the way or shifted enough to take the hit in a less vulnerable spot, but he didn’t. She needed to get the anger out … to understand that sometimes violence was the answer. The prongs of the taser hit his chest, electricity rolled through him, lighting up the neurons and firing all his pain sensors before his brain went blank and he slipped back into unconsciousness.

_First life lesson: do what they said. Be who they wanted. Everything to everybody. A punching bag, a hero, a pyromaniac, a good agent, a villain. There is no Grant, only a blank slate; do whatever keeps him safe, keeps him alive. Don’t feel, don’t care … that way lies madness. Shut it all down, retreat into the darkness and reinvent himself one more time until he can’t remember if he was ever anything at all._

“Your file is interesting reading. Fiction, mostly, but entertaining.”

He wasn’t even sure if she was here or even where here was. The manacles on his wrists had rubbed his skin raw, his shoulders wrenched behind him for so long he felt the muscles pop across the socket as he tried to sit up.

“Every account of your childhood is eerily the same.” She flipped the folder open, thumbing through the papers. Damn, but she was a good as they said; he wanted to believe that was sympathy in her green eyes. “Abusive parents, bully for a brother who drowned the other brother while you watched. Anyone would understand why you set that fire. A perfect recruit for Garrett. Too perfect.”

At a point, he didn’t need to breath, his body shutting down as his heart stuttered. There was nothing left, just old memories that floated through his brain.

“But then there are the odd stories that you can only get if you talk to the people who remember. A neighbor who tells of screaming and crying, your mother running from the house in terror. A school mate who disappeared one night after a ball game; to this day, his father swears he was out with you and your brother despite the testimony to the contrary. And your sister, in a mental ward, claiming she sees visions of death and destruction, fire and ice.”

His mother’s screams echoed in his head, breaking through all his carefully constructed walls. Blood on his hands, the dog barking all night long, his sister shaking, eyes rolling back in her head. Meaty fists slamming into his jaw, a child’s voice calling for help, his father telling him he was a waste of space. All those memories that he’d worked hard to forget began to fade, leaving only blankness in their wake.

“The question, it would seem, is who are you, Grant Douglas Ward.” Natasha stood and walked over to where he sat on the floor. “But I’m betting you don’t even know the answer to that, do you?” She grabbed his hair in her fist and tilted his face up so she could see him. “No, the real question is _what_ are you?”

HYDRA agent. Level 7 SHIELD agent. I’m Grant Ward; I just jumped out of a plane to save you without a parachute. Garrett’s boy. Phil Coulson’s project. Melinda May’s lover. That Ward boy. The boy who killed his brother.

 “Dead.” Garrett had defined him and now Grant was used up, useless, done. “Please. Kill me.”

For a second he thought she was going to do it. She could, fast and neat and it would be over. He’d truly be no one.

“You’re going to wish I had.” She dropped his head and stepped back. “But that’s not the correct answer. What do you want to be?”

His brain stopped, no thoughts left, just an empty husk of all the men he’d pretended to be. It took every ounce of strength he had to get up and ignore the white hot pain of his weight bearing down on his broken and battered body. But he did, kneeling before her, this woman he felt a strange kinship with.

 “I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Good. That’s good.” Natasha’s hand carded into his sweaty hair. “That’s a start.”

 


End file.
